The Dalai Lama and The CIA

[chlamor]

The Dalai Lama and the CIA

Revolutionary Worker #765, July 17, 1994

Shortly after the 1949 victory of Maoist forces against the U.S.-backed dictator Chiang Kai-shek, the revolution came to Tibet. The ruling class of Tibet--a feudal class of aristocrats and monks--alternated wildly between passivity and resistance.

Starting in 1957, sections of their class participated in a series of armed anti-communist actions--attempting to stop the deepening revolutionary changes in Tibet. Lamaist propagandists, including the Dalai Lama himself, portray these actions as a noble, home-grown resistance to foreign domination.

The truth is this: from its beginning within Tibet in the 1950s to the armed feudalist uprising of 1959, to the armed exile-based guerrilla movement of the 1960s--this "struggle" was organized, financed, trained, armed, led, and finally dispersed by the CIA.

In the old days, the Dalai Lama was a figurehead of an oppressive feudal order. In exile, he became the figurehead of a Tibetan CIA-backed, anticommunist armed movement headed by his brother, Gyalo Thondup--similar to so many "contra" (counterrevolutionary) armies the CIA has created to wage covert wars.

@STARS = *****

"Many of the arms were brought in from abroad. The rebels' base south of the Tsangpo river on a number of occasions received airdropped supplies from the Chiang Kai-shek bands and radio stations were set up by agents sent by the imperialists and the Chiang Kai-shek bands for their intrigues."

The revolutionary news agency Xinhua, March 1959

"Nobody, either in committed or uncommitted countries, would be taken in by the communist allegation that... the rebellion was supported by `imperialists, the Chiang Kai-shek bands and foreign reactionaries.' "

The Economist 1959

"There is nothing at all coming in from the outside."

Thubten Norbu, the Dalai Lama's
brother, interviewed in
U.S. News and World Report, 1959

In the early 1950s, the U.S. invaded Korea and threatened to invade revolutionary China itself. Meanwhile, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked day and night to gather reactionary forces into its spy networks and to develop covert teams that could wage secret war against the new people's power in China.

In April 1949 U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson cabled his Ambassador in New Delhi that the U.S. rulers would like to see "Tibetan military capacity [to] resist quietly strengthened." Tibet historian A. Tom Grunfeld writes: "In the summer of 1950 instructions were given to the Office of Policy Coordination, the bureaucratic arm officially in charge of covert operations, to `initiate psychological warfare and paramilitary operations against the Chinese Communist regime.' "

Top feudal forces around the Dalai Lama offered themselves as eager agents--first to the reactionary Kuomintang (KMT) forces led by Chiang Kai-shek on Taiwan and soon to the U.S. directly. The Dalai Lama's two older brothers, the "incarnated lama" Thubten Jigme Norbu and Gyalo Thondup, emerged as key Tibetan CIA agents.

Grunfeld writes, "George Patterson...was intimately involved as a translator and go-between in these negotiations. He reported that in 1953 Thubten Norbu contacted the CIA and was told to take his case to the KMT (from whom he was already receiving covert aid). Patterson also recalled an encounter two years later between Ragpa Pangdatsang and representatives from the Indian and American governments. At this time the United States was supposed to have suggested a ten-year plan of revolt, the aim of which was the eventual overthrow of China's control in Tibet.... John F. Avedon, whose recent book can be considered the `official' version of the Dalai Lama view of history, contends that Gyalo Thondup made an agreement with the CIA as early as 1951. It was initially an intelligence-gathering arrangement upgraded to guerrilla warfare in 1956. Within a short space of time the United States had eclipsed the KMT as the rebel's prime source of military aid." Grunfeld adds that in opening these arrangements with the U.S. imperialists, Thubten Norbu carried "a letter authorizing him to negotiate on behalf of the Dalai Lama." In 1958, the CIA started using air bases in Bangkok, Thailand to airdrop guns and ammunition into the ethnic-Tibetan regions of Kham.

Grunfeld writes: "It was Gyalo Thondup who arranged the first CIA training missions, picking six Tibetans for that purpose." A secret CIA training camp was soon set up for Tibetan agents at Camp Hale, high in the Colorado Rockies.

Tibetan Plots--Made in the USA

The CIA intrigues encouraged an armed uprising in March 1959, as feudal forces tried to expel the revolutionary army from Tibet. Grunfeld writes: "Despite cries of innocence on the part of the Dalai Lama, officials in Washington were planning for the events months before that fateful March in 1959."

In March 1959, the feudal Tibetan forces were quickly defeated. The Dalai Lama was whisked into exile in India by a covert CIA operation. Grunfeld documents that CIA-trained agents in the Dalai Lama's caravan laid out special airdrop targets in the snow to guide a U.S. military C130 aircraft that had been specially modified to fly in the thin Tibetan air. Halfway to India, a radio operator joined the Dalai Lama's group so the whole operation could be directly monitored from the CIA station in Dacca, East Pakistan.

The CIA immediately set up a Tibetan contra force among the exiles. Ten Tibetan contra camps were set up in the tiny principality of Mustang on the Nepal-China border. The CIA had three more C130s modified for high altitude airdrops. Grunfeld writes: "This major recruiting effort yielded 14,000 Tibetans and some additional tribal people in the field, `entirely dependent on long-range transport and infiltration,' and `armed, equipped and fed by the Agency [CIA].' "

In 1961 the Dalai Lama said: "the only weapons that the [lamaist] rebels possess are those they've managed to capture from the Chinese." Some reports say the Dalai Lama personally picked the contra field commander in Mustang.

India's War Threats

At this time, the Indian government was preparing a border war with revolutionary China, and their direct involvement in the Tibetan contra army picked up. At a secret Indian base in Orissa, U.S. agents, Indian officials and Tibetan contras met weekly to coordinate their activities. The first Tibetan contra raid into China was staged in late 1961, just before war broke out between India and China. Grunfeld documents a CIA study from this period with detailed information on how Tibet's unique weather might affect the use of aerial, chemical and biological warfare.

Meanwhile, the top Tibetan clergy rented tens of thousands of Tibetan refugees to the Indian government to build military roads in northern India for the coming war against the Chinese revolution (see the accompanying article for a description of these forced labor camps). When war broke out between India and revolutionary China in 1962, India's forces were quickly defeated by the People's Liberation Army.

While the Tibetan exiles were helping India attack China, powerful revolutionary forces inside India were taking inspiration from the Maoist revolution. Internationalist Indian revolutionaries took the side of China. Soon, revolutionary communists led by Charu Mazumdar formed a new Maoist vanguard party in India and in 1967 started a great armed struggle among the peasants of Naxalbari--in the same Darjeeling district where so many Tibetan feudals had entered India.

Raids and Spying from the Tibetan Contra Bases

*IP2*The Tibetan contra border raids continued through the '60s. The CIA money that Gyalo Thondup received for these operations increased. The CIA hoped these Tibetan contras could maintain networks of agents, conduct sabotage, and generally harass the revolutionary forces.

*IP0*But, overall, this whole Tibetan contra operation was a failure. As the revolution deepened in Tibet, the border was more and more successfully sealed. Revolutionary militias of the People's Communes--made up of former Tibetan serfs--joined the People's Liberation Army in hunting down and killing these hated feudal saboteurs and spies. Meanwhile, the people in Nepal increasingly demanded that these armed camps be removed.

In the last known raid in 1969, a Tibetan contra raiding party was completely wiped out by revolutionary forces. By the early 1970s, the U.S. ruling class was tied down in Vietnam and was preparing to open relations with the People's Republic of China. A corrupt, ineffectual, armed Tibetan contra movement no longer suited U.S. imperialist plans. The CIA simply cut the Tibetan contras loose.

This was a pattern of use-and-discard familiar to reactionaries among the Kurds of Iran, the Hmong hill tribesmen of Indochina, the Misquito Indians of eastern Nicaragua, and the Islamic fundamentalist forces who fought in Afghanistan.

In 1975 the Dalai Lama ordered the remnants of the contra forces in Nepal to lay down their arms. The Tibetan feudals were militarily and politically defeated inside Tibet. When CIA funding dried up, the Tibetan contras simply had no basis for continuing their guerrilla war from exile.

*****

For documentation and more detail on the CIA involvement with the Dalai Lama's contra movement, see A. Tom Grunfeld's book The Making of Modern Tibet.

http://revcom.us/a/firstvol/tibet/cia5.htm

[Stephen Morgan]

In the early 1950s, the U.S. invaded Korea and threatened to invade revolutionary China itself.

That's one way of looking at it, I suppose.

The fact is Tibet is as free as its ever been. Not very free, but no worse than before. A state dictatorship in place of a feudal one. Religious intolerance generally for the massacre of the Bon. China has historically owned Tibet, as recognised by Russia and the British Empire in 1911. The Dalai Lama was himself born a Chinaman.

[H_C_E]

I am reminded that I tend to forget that at forums like this it is especially important to remember the old maxim "Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see."

Not interested in defending the Dalai Lama as I'm sure he is not a saint. We're all flawed and imperfect, some more than others. But sometimes it seems that some ould have us believe *EVERYTHING* is a damn plot.

Oh well.

HCE

[chlamor]

I am reminded that I tend to forget that at forums like this it is especially important to remember the old maxim "Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see."

Not interested in defending the Dalai Lama as I'm sure he is not a saint. We're all flawed and imperfect, some more than others. But sometimes it seems that some ould have us believe *EVERYTHING* is a damn plot.

Oh well.

HCE

I thought this was all comon knowledge. The information has been out there awhile. There are de-classified documents on this.

Camp Hale
Camp Hale Site
(U.S. National Register of Historic Places)



Camp Hale, between Red Cliff and Leadville in the Eagle River valley in Colorado, was a United States Army training facility constructed in 1942 for what became the 10th Mountain Division. It was named in honor of General Irving Hale. Soldiers were trained in mountain climbing, skiing and cold-weather survival. When it was in full operation, approximately 16,000 soldiers were housed there.

From 1959 to 1964, Tibetan guerrillas were secretly trained at Camp Hale by the CIA. The site was chosen because of the similarities of the Rocky Mountains with the Himalayan Plateau. The Tibetans loved the surroundings so much that they nicknamed the camp, "Dhumra", the Garden. The CIA circulated a story in the local press that Camp Hale was to be the site of atomic tests and would be a high security zone. Until its closure in 1964, the entire area was cordoned off and its perimeter patrolled by military police. In the nearby mining town of Leadville, where instructors from Camp Hale occasionally went for rest and recreation, numerous rumors spread about the camp but no one guessed its real function.

The Tibetan project was codenamed ST Circus, and it was similar to the CIA operation that trained dissident Cubans in what later became the Bay of Pigs Invasion. In all, around 259 Tibetans were trained at Camp Hale. Some were parachuted back into Tibet to link up with local resistance groups (most perished); others were sent overland into Tibet on intelligence gathering missions; and yet others were instrumental in setting up the CIA-funded Tibetan resistance force that operated out of Mustang, in northern Nepal (1959-1974). After Camp Hale was dismantled in 1964, no Tibetans remained in Colorado.

From 1958 to 1960 Anthony Poshepny trained various special missions teams, including Tibetan Khambas and Hui Muslims, for operations in China against the Communist government. Poshepny sometimes claimed that he personally escorted the 14th Dalai Lama out of Tibet, but this has been denied, both by former CIA officers involved in the Tibet operation, and by the Tibetan Government-in-exile (Central Tibetan Administration).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Hale

Much of the reason behind this rather peculiar demographic is that Tibetan guerillas were secretly trained by the CIA at Camp Hale outside of Leadville. Camp Hale was used as a training camp for expatriate Tibetans to be inserted to foment uprising in the mountain kingdom after its invasion by the Chinese People's Liberation Army, between 1959 and 1965.

From 1958 to 1960, Anthony Poshepny trained various special missions teams, including Tibetan Khambas and Hui Muslims, for operations in China against the Communist government. Poshepny sometimes claimed that he personally escorted the 14th Dalai Lama out of Tibet, but sources in the Tibetan exile deny this.

The site was chosen because of the similarities of the Rocky Mountains in the area with the Himalayan Plateau. This was a contemporary plan of the CIA to the one that trained dissident Cubans in what later became the Bay of Pigs incident. After that failed foray, the Tibetan plan in Colorado's mountains was abandoned, but the Tibetans, having no free homeland to return to, opted to stay in the friendly environment and homelike terrain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_American

[theeKultleeder]

The fact is Tibet is as free as its ever been. Not very free, but no worse than before. A state dictatorship in place of a feudal one. Religious intolerance generally for the massacre of the Bon. China has historically owned Tibet, as recognised by Russia and the British Empire in 1911. The Dalai Lama was himself born a Chinaman.

That's not a very educated statement. They were living in the past, in an old system. Doesn't mean it was a brutal system. The Chinese system can be said categorically to be brutal.

There is a very big difference between the two governments. I know, you probably think Tibetan Buddhism is a Nazi plot by underground space-men to brainwash and control the world.

Yep. Must be true.

[theeKultleeder]

I thought this was all comon knowledge. The information has been out there awhile. There are de-classified documents on this.

It is. Apparently, when it comes down to a choice between cultural revolution Mao-style and the CIA funding indigenous resistance, you choose the Chinese.

But we all knew that about you, chlamor. In your world, I wold be one of the first people you would throw in a "re-education" camp.

"If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao,
You ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow
... but you know it's gonna be
Alright."

[chlamor]

I thought this was all comon knowledge. The information has been out there awhile. There are de-classified documents on this.

It is. Apparently, when it comes down to a choice between cultural revolution Mao-style and the CIA funding indigenous resistance, you choose the Chinese.

But we all knew that about you, chlamor. In your world, I wold be one of the first people you would throw in a "re-education" camp.

"If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao,
You ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow
... but you know it's gonna be
Alright."

Maybe you could dream up some alternatives other than the two you mention. Unless you are selecting CIA funding "indigenous resistance" as your preferred option. I have to laugh at the very thought of such a thing. The CIA's record of funding such "indigenous resistance" is remarkable isn't it? Or perhaps this is one of the gaps in your remarkable swath of historical knowledge.

Please put "Killing Hope" by William Blum on your Christmas list.

First thing is to do a little edumacatin' and then we'll work on the re- aspect of your knowledge base.

But it is nice to observe the consistency in tactics of avoidance. Anything to say about the articles posted here?

Could you take the time to read this next article and give us your erudite analysis of how this relates to the topic posted and current geopolitical affairs?

In "my" world one actually reads their history.

Tell me what you think:

At stake in the dispute are not spiritual matters or fine doctrinal points but an earthly lust for power and considerable sums of money. While most of the 130,000 Tibetans in India, Nepal and Bhutan eke out a precarious existence on small plots of land or in handicraft production and small businesses, the religious hierarchy has been able to amass significant fortunes through business investments and donations, particularly by exploiting interest in the West in Tibetan Buddhism.

The Karma Kagyu sect, headed by the Karmapa Lama, has a lavish monastery in Rumtek in Sikkim in northern India, which houses the symbol of his leadership—a black crown said to have been woven from the hair of 100,000 dakinis, or fairies, and to possess miraculous properties. The sect also has a centre in the United States, where the 16th Karmapa Lama chose to spend much of his time, and a large business empire. Estimates of the worth of the Karmapa Charitable Trust start at around $US1 billion and escalate from there.

<snip>

The Dalai Lama and the CIA

Little more has been written on the political machinations behind the boy's flight as both India and China have sought to downplay the issue. India is allowing Trinley Dorje to remain as a refugee but has refused to grant him the status of political asylum. Beijing has indicated that it is satisfied with New Delhi's response. But all of this underlines the basic fact that Tibetan factional politics has always been bound up with regional politics and the geo-political interests of the major powers. The question of Tibet is connected to the longstanding border dispute between India and China, the bitter conflict between Pakistan and India particularly over Kashmir, and wider strategic issues connected to the scramble for oil and minerals in Central Asia.

For centuries the high Tibetan plateau has constituted a key strategic position within the region—long under Chinese patronage, and then after the Chinese revolution of 1911, used by the British in India as a buffer against China and Russia. Soon after Mao's peasant armies took power in Beijing in 1949, the Chinese army seized Tibet and in 1951 it was formally incorporated into China.

But the Chinese Stalinists were unable to create a stable social base for their rule. Beijing invariably approached religious and cultural questions in Tibet with the heavy hand of the state bureaucrat imbued with Chinese chauvinism. Incapable of eliminating social inequality, poverty and cultural backwardness, Chinese policy has in varying degrees combined brutal repression with pandering to Tibetan Buddhism in an effort to create its own officially sanctioned hierarchy of lamas through which to manipulate local politics.

China's brutish behaviour in Tibet created oppositional tendencies. Throughout the Cold War, the US was able to exploit as a means of putting pressure on Beijing. While not diplomatically recognising the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile, US administrations have in the past provided diplomatic, financial and even military assistance to the Tibetan priesthood. After China's takeover of Tibet in 1950, the CIA financed and trained Tibetans to engage in espionage and guerrilla activities against the Chinese authorities.

Details of the CIA's operations in Tibet have recently begun to leak out as former operatives have began to publicly reminisce about their Cold War exploits. An article in the US-based Newsweek magazine last August pointed out that the CIA's activities began as far back as 1956. While the Dalai Lama, keen to preserve his image as a man of peace, claims not to have been directly involved, his elder brother Gyalo Thondup was at the centre of the operations. According to the magazine's report: “Gyalo Thondup now says he didn't inform his exalted sibling about all of his intelligence connections at the time: ‘This was a very dirty business'.”

The Newsweek article explained: “Beginning in 1958, American operatives trained about 300 Tibetans at Camp Hale in Colorado. The trainees were schooled in spy photography and sabotage, Morse Code and minelaying. Between 1957 and 1960, the CIA dropped more than 400 tonnes of cargo to the resistance. Yet nine out 10 guerrillas who fought in Tibet were killed by the Chinese or committed suicide to evade capture, according to an article by aerospace historian William Leary in the Smithsonian's Air & Space Magazine.”

These activities culminated in an abortive uprising in Tibet in 1959, which was ruthlessly suppressed by Chinese security forces. The Dalai Lama, his close associates and thousands of other Tibetans fled to Nepal and India and established a government-in-exile, which received US and CIA support throughout the 1960s. “By the mid-60s,” Newsweek explained, “the Tibet operation was costing Washington $1.7 million a year, according to intelligence documents. That included $500,000 subsidy to support 2,100 guerrillas based in Nepal and $180,000 worth of ‘subsidy to the Dalai Lama'.”

<snip>

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/mar2000/tib-m22.shtml

[NavnDansk]

Thank you for the information and links Chalmor. The CIA bragged on the PBS special DOWNFALL OF A DICTATOR about their aid to overthrow Milosevic including a simplified advertisement of a fist that anyone could stencil for graffeti.

Do you have any ideas on how the CIA could be stopped, disbanded? Harry Truman was very courageous in stating in a newspaper article that if he had known that the CIA would turn into the American SS he never would have approved the creation of the CIA when he was president.

[chlamor]

Thank you for the information and links Chalmor. The CIA bragged on the PBS special DOWNFALL OF A DICTATOR about their aid to overthrow Milosevic including a simplified advertisement of a fist that anyone could stencil for graffeti.

Do you have any ideas on how the CIA could be stopped, disbanded? Harry Truman was very courageous in stating in a newspaper article that if he had known that the CIA would turn into the American SS he never would have approved the creation of the CIA when he was president.

It must be de-funded. At present about 40 billion per year goes to the CIA. That's the on the record budget of the CIA (even though it was suppose to be secretive). Quite a bit more comes to the CIA courtesy of various black market activities such as the drug trade and gun running. Who knows how much this amounts to.

The only way that I can see the CIA being disbanded is through Congressional action that cuts the funds. This must be connected to a larger cut in the overall military budget. I guess in short we are looking for the answer on how to eliminate Empire. Just guessing.

Here's a conversation that touches upon this:
http://www.cdi.org/adm/Transcripts/541/

All we get through the conventional discourse is talk of reform. The very thought of reforming the CIA is comical.

[chlamor]

Heinrich Harrer, Dalai Lama tutor, mountaineer, dies: Brad Pitt
Chicago Sun-Times, Jan 8, 2006 by William J. Kole

VIENNA, Austria -- Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian mountaineer and former Nazi who became a friend and tutor of the young Dalai Lama, died Saturday. He was 93.

Mr. Harrer's family said in a statement that "in great peace, he carried out his final expedition" when he died in a hospital. His family, which did not specify a cause of death, said Mr. Harrer would be buried Jan. 14.

Actor Brad Pitt played Mr. Harrer in the film "Seven Years in Tibet," which was based on Mr. Harrer's 1953 memoir of his time in the Himalayan nation.

Born July 6, 1912, the son of a postal worker in the Carinthian village of Knappenberg, Mr. Harrer first made headlines in 1938 with the first ascent of Switzerland's dreaded Eiger North Face.
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At least nine mountaineers had died trying to scale the sheer wall, long considered Europe's greatest mountaineering challenge. Dozens have perished in subsequent attempts.

"We were never afraid. We never had any idea of returning or giving up," Mr. Harrer told reporters on the 50th anniversary of the feat.

His ascent earned him fame and a handshake from Adolf Hitler: Mr. Harrer had joined the Nazi Party when Germany took control of Austria in 1938. He also joined the SS, the party's police wing associated with atrocities in World War II.

Welcomed by Tibet's elite

Mr. Harrer later said he joined the SS and Nazi Party to enter a teachers' organization. The membership let him join a government- financed Himalayan expedition, his life's dream.
Advertisement

Mr. Harrer and a colleague were arrested by British troops in India at the end of that expedition as war broke out in September 1939.

The two escaped an internment camp in 1944 and trekked through Tibet to Lhasa, where few Westerners had been allowed to enter. They soon endeared themselves to the country's secular elite and to the religious head, the young Dalai Lama.

Mr. Harrer taught the Dalai Lama mathematics, English and sports, and became his adviser and friend. Mr. Harrer's subsequent book about the experience, Seven Years in Tibet, was translated into 48 languages.

Film was revised

He later explored other remote areas of the globe, wrote about a dozen books and made about 40 documentary films.

His adventures became known to millions worldwide in the 1997 film starring Pitt. It was only a few months before the movie's release that his Nazi past caught up with him.

Documents cited by the German magazine Stern in an expose just before the release showed that Mr. Harrer joined Hitler's underground storm troops in Austria in 1933, when he was 21 and Nazi organizations still were banned in Austria.

Although he had said he joined the Nazi Party to further his teaching and mountaineering careers, Mr. Harrer did not explain why he joined the SS when Nazis still were persecuted in Austria.

The revelations prompted some minor changes to the film to depict Mr. Harrer with Nazi officials and the Nazi flag, "Seven Years" director Jean-Jacques Annaud said in 1997.

'An ideological error'

Mr. Harrer was interned at the start of the war and never linked to any Nazi atrocities.

"This is a man who . . . feels a tremendous shame," Annaud said at the time. "I respect him as a man who has remorse."

Simon Wiesenthal, the famed Nazi hunter who died last year, said Mr. Harrer was not involved in politics and was innocent of wrongdoing.

A publicity-shy man who divided his time between Austria and Liechtenstein, Mr. Harrer told the Austria Press Agency in June 1997 that he had a "clear conscience."

He said, however, that "from today's view, the former party and SS membership is an extremely unpleasant thing."

He also repudiated his Nazi membership as a "stupid mistake" and an "ideological error."

Mr. Harrer was decorated with many high awards and honors, including Austria's Golden Humboldt medal and the "Light of Truth" award bestowed by Tibet's government-in-exile in India.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_q ... _n15993946

[H_C_E]

Can't speak for anyone else, but I'm not avoiding shit! What would you prefer I do? i'll write out some options and you pick the one you prefer:

1) The CIA is of course evil and so is the Dalai Lama. I'm getting my rifle now.

2) I'm hitting the streets to tell everyone about this. I'm sure most everyone will follow me in acts of aggression towards the CIA or at least resistance, because let's face it, no one wants to go to the mall anymore.

3) I'm getting so angry I can't see straight. Yes, I'm really angry and indignant too!

4) I will spend every waking moment from now on trying to figure out ways to single handedly dismantle the CIA.

5) I will begin now and never cease in writing the editor of all the major newspapers in the US, as well as senators, congressmen and anyone else I can think of about this matter. I'm going to write the Dalai Lama as well and tell him what a piece of shit he is!

6) I'll commiserate in despair and anger here with you at the Rigorous Intuition forums.

And as to disbanding the CIA, John F. Kennedy said he would break it into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds and you see what it got him.

HCE

[chlamor]

Can't speak for anyone else, but I'm not avoiding shit! What would you prefer I do? i'll write out some options and you pick the one you prefer:

1) The CIA is of course evil and so is the Dalai Lama. I'm getting my rifle now.

2) I'm hitting the streets to tell everyone about this. I'm sure most everyone will follow me in acts of aggression towards the CIA or at least resistance, because let's face it, no one wants to go to the mall anymore.

3) I'm getting so angry I can't see straight. Yes, I'm really angry and indignant too!

4) I will spend every waking moment from now on trying to figure out ways to single handedly dismantle the CIA.

5) I will begin now and never cease in writing the editor of all the major newspapers in the US, as well as senators, congressmen and anyone else I can think of about this matter. I'm going to write the Dalai Lama as well and tell him what a piece of shit he is!

6) I'll commiserate in despair and anger here with you at the Rigorous Intuition forums.

And as to disbanding the CIA, John F. Kennedy said he would break it into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds and you see what it got him.

HCE

In November 2005 the Dalai Lama spoke at Stanford University on “The Heart of Nonviolence,” but stopped short of a blanket condemnation of all violence. Violent actions that are committed in order to reduce future suffering are not to be condemned, he said, citing World War II as an example of a worthy effort to protect democracy. What of the four years of carnage and mass destruction in Iraq, a war condemned by most of the world—even by a conservative pope--as a blatant violation of international law and a crime against humanity? The Dalai Lama was undecided: “The Iraq war—it’s too early to say, right or wrong.”#53

Earlier he had voiced support for the U.S. military intervention against Yugoslavia and, later on, the U.S. military intervention into Afghanistan.#54

<snip>

http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html

#53 San Francisco Chronicle, 5 November 2005.

#54 Times of India 13 October 2000; Samantha Conti's report, Reuter, 17 June 1994; Amitabh Pal, "The Dalai Lama Interview," Progressive, January 2006.

To welcome the end of the old feudal theocracy in Tibet is not to applaud everything about Chinese rule in that country. This point is seldom understood by today’s Shangri-La believers in the West. The converse is also true: To denounce the Chinese occupation does not mean we have to romanticize the former feudal régime. Tibetans deserve to be perceived as actual people, not perfected spiritualists or innocent political symbols. “To idealize them,” notes Ma Jian, a dissident Chinese traveler to Tibet (now living in Britain), “is to deny them their humanity.”#65

#65 Ma Jian, Stick Out Your Tongue (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006).

[chlamor]

John F. Kennedy said he would break it into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds and you see what it got him.

HCE

JFK also initiated the much ballyhooed Peace Corps. The Dalai ended his talk with a posthumous backslap for JFK for said act.

If the Kennedy White House was about managing image, perhaps nothing
succeeded on their own terms better than the Peace Corps. Embodying the

President's rhetoric about "Ask not what your country can do for you,
but what you can do for your country," this nominally volunteer program

would benefit the world's poor without asking for anything in return.

Beneath the rhetoric, the Peace Corps was a variation on a very old
theme, namely the tendency for colonial powers to use civil
administration as a means to co-opt hostile populations. Great Britain
had perfected these techniques in India. Marshall Windmiller, a
professor at San Francisco State who had participated in Peace Corps
training programs in the early 1960s, spells out his disillusionment in

"The Peace Corps and Pax Americana." Referring to Thomas Babington
Macaulay (1800-1859), he characterizes the Peace Corps as an exercise
in
"Macaulayism." As a functionary in India, Macaulay argued that "To
trade
with civilized men is infinitely more profitable than to govern
savages."

Of course, key to bringing civilization to the savages was a properly
functioning civil service and an educational system that could
inculcate
the values of the colonizers. Seen in this light, the Peace Corps's
main
function, according to Windmiller, is "to develop pro-American,
English-speaking elites, and to make America's role in world affairs,
whatever it may be, more palatable."

Windmiller focuses on the example of Rhoda and Earl Brooks, a
husband-and-wife team who served in Ecuador from 1962 to 1964. They did

the usual things that Peace Corps volunteers did, from teaching English

to clearing streets of garbage.

When the USA intruded into Ecuadorian fishing waters during their
sting,
Communists organized protests against the "pirates." Naturally, the
Brooks felt compelled to present the American case. In their English
conversation classes and at their homes, they tried to convince the
Ecuadorian youth of the benefits of "democratic capitalism," for whom
many the word "capitalist" was synonymous for murderer. Because the
Brooks were seen as modest and idealistic, their ideas were more easily

accepted than if they came straight from the American consulate. That,
of course, was the whole idea.

Kennedy himself occasionally spoke more candidly about the goal of
initiatives like the Peace Corps. In National Security Action
Memorandum
No.132 directed to the Agency for International Development, that was
cc'd to the Peace Corps director as well as the CIA, the President
declares his intentions:

"As you know, I desire the appropriate agencies of this Government to
give utmost attention and emphasis to programs designed to counter
Communist indirect aggression, which I regard as a grave threat during
the 1960s. I have already written the Secretary of Defense 'to move to
a
new level of increased activity across the board" in the
counter-insurgency field.

"Police assistance programs, including those under the aegis of your
agency, are also a crucial element in our response to this challenge. I

understand that there has been some tendency toward de-emphasizing them

under the new aid criteria developed by your agency. I recognize that
such programs may seem marginal in terms of focusing our energies on
those key sectors which will contribute most to sustained economic
growth. But I regard them as justified on a different though related
basis, i.e., that of contributing to internal security and resisting
Communist-supported insurgency."

Eventually, some returned Peace Corps volunteers saw through the
imperialist aims of their higher-ups and joined the Vietnam antiwar
movement. Indeed, their number and the numbers of civil rights
activists
disgusted and radicalized by White House inaction probably numbered in
the tens of thousands at the peak. One might conclude by saying that
the
main benefit of the Kennedy White House is that it spurred idealistic
young people to transcend the limitations of an administration that was

guided more by image than by substance.

http://unrepentant.blogspot.com/2005/01/jfk.html

[theeKultleeder]

I thought this was all comon knowledge. The information has been out there awhile. There are de-classified documents on this.

It is. Apparently, when it comes down to a choice between cultural revolution Mao-style and the CIA funding indigenous resistance, you choose the Chinese.

But we all knew that about you, chlamor. In your world, I wold be one of the first people you would throw in a "re-education" camp.

"If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao,
You ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow
... but you know it's gonna be
Alright."

Maybe you could dream up some alternatives other than the two you mention...

But it is nice to observe the consistency in tactics of avoidance. Anything to say about the articles posted here?


In "my" world one actually reads their history.

What am I avoiding? I didn't mention those two alternatives, you did.

Do I really have to spell out for you what I think the alternative to state sponsored revolution and state sponsored counter-revolution is? Because it's not an easy answer or a quick fix.

BTW, I didn't question any of your sources, which are valid, and old news, indeed. I did question your characteristic attack on HCE who only added a little rationality to the discussion.

I'm sorry, dude, "my" history is not copy and pastable like yours, so let me type a few lines for you:

"Tibet was a society that combined the the literacy and rationality that we associate with centralized states with the subtle exploitation of shamanic processes more familiar from stateless and tribal peoples. As our own world moves past the certainties of the nation-state system into an uncharted future, we may still find that we have something to learn from Tibet's experience."
-Geoffrey Samuel, Civilized Shamans, 1993

[Edited to remove insults and increase signal to noise ration...]

[theeKultleeder]

The Dalai Lama is really a Nazi Illuminist who wants to control the world through sand mandalas!

Because if it ain't in the Bible, it's from the anti-Christ, and if you ain't with "our version of Jesus" you're against him.